Death of sons frustrates Iraqis' thirst for justice / Hussein brothers' crimes won't be investigated in a trial

Vivienne Walt, Chronicle Foreign Service

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, July 24, 2003

2003-07-24 04:00:00 PDT Baghdad -- One day after celebrating the bloody death of Saddam Hussein's two sons, many Iraqis say they awoke Wednesday deeply disappointed that two of their worst tormentors would never face justice from those they brutalized.

"We really want trials. It would be very good for all people to have heard about their crimes," said Kareem al-Ruba'i, 43, an auto engineer who sat slumped on the sidewalk in a bid to escape the suffocating heat of his spare- parts store in east Baghdad. "Especially for Saddam, we would like a trial."

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, chief of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, was asked in a news conference Wednesday why American soldiers had not laid siege to the Mosul house where Odai and Qusai Hussein were hiding and attempt to coax them into surrendering. Sanchez said that the commander on the ground had made the decision based on mission guidelines.

"Our mission was find, kill or capture," he said. "We had an enemy that was barricaded, and we had to take measures to neutralize the target."

But with the Hussein brothers dead, a potential gold mine of information and trial evidence is gone forever, say researchers who have spent years collecting testimony about the Hussein family's abuses.

The flamboyant Odai, notorious in Baghdad as a kidnapper, rapist and torturer, headed the Fedayeen Saddam, a corps of militants whose holdouts are believed to have coordinated many of the current attacks on U.S. soldiers.

Qusai, ostensibly more reserved, led the Republican Guards and oversaw the massacre of tens of thousands of Shiites after the 1991 Gulf War. He was also thought to be extremely knowledgeable about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

"Clearly the two sons would have been key people to put on trial and to point out other responsibles and bring them to justice," Hanny Mengally, Middle East director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in an interview. "Putting people on trial would at least bring closure for many Iraqis."

The new Iraqi Governing Council began drawing up plans for war-crimes trials within days of its formation last week. "It was one of the first things they did, so clearly this is very important to Iraqis," said Mengally.

On Wednesday, U.S. military officials captured Barzan Abd Majid al-Tikriti, head of the Special Republican Guards and No. 11 in the list of the former regime's 55 most-wanted officials. All but 18 are now dead or in jail.

But the biggest fish -- Hussein himself -- apparently remains on the run, with a $25 million reward posted for information leading to his capture or death. Sanchez would not speculate how long it would take to net the deposed dictator, saying simply, "We still have high-value targets."

Baghdad residents say they sense that Hussein will soon be in U.S. hands. But they say they want the satisfaction of seeing him once more on television - - a medium on which he appeared nightly for decades during his rule -- but at the defendant's table.

Abdul Amir, who owns a tiny luggage store in the Karrada district, says his brother purchased a camel last month to slaughter once Hussein is captured. "There will be a big feast," he said.

"We want to see the head of the snake, and that's Saddam," he said. "We must see him being caught alive, and shown on television."

After Tuesday night's euphoria about Odai and Qusai, skeptical Iraqis also began questioning why they had seen no photographs of the corpses. Many said they wanted visual proof that the two were indeed dead.

"If we Iraqis don't see something with our own eyes, we just don't believe it," said Amir, 45. "We are used to being lied to."

In light of such skepticism, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States would soon release photographs of the corpses, contradicting a long-held U.S. practice to not show photos of enemy prisoners or dead.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said separately, "We are going to make sure the Iraqi people believe this at the end of the day, and there are a lot of ways to do that."

Sanchez said that in addition to dental records and X-rays of Odai Hussein's legs, permanently injured in a 1996 assassination attempt, American forces had brought in four "senior former regime members to do a visual identification of the bodies."

Also Wednesday and today, five more U.S. soldiers died in guerrilla-style attacks.

Three soldiers were killed today after they came under attack from gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in northern Iraq. A military spokeswoman could not immediately say where the attack took place or whether any soldiers were wounded.

On Wednesday, one soldier was killed and six wounded in an assault on a convoy near Mosul, while another convoy was attacked in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding two.

Forty-five U.S. military personnel have been killed by hostile acts since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.

The Al-Arabiyah satellite television station broadcast a recording purportedly made by Hussein on Sunday, two days before his sons' deaths. The voice on the tape exhorts Iraqis to continue their attacks against American soldiers.

"Yes, this war has not ended," says the voice. "The will of the people will not be subdued by the enemy."

The Pentagon announced the approval of a plan for rotating new soldiers into Iraq, a move that will relieve some who have been serving in the region for nearly a year.

The 3rd Infantry Division will go home in September, the 101st Airborne Division in February and March, the 4th Infantry Division in April and the 1st Armored Division in May.